Ruled by Secrecy
by orangeturquoise
Summary: After the fight at the temple of the ancients, the Turks try to come to terms with the death of their commander. Tseng is gone now - or is he?


_**Ruled by Secrecy**_

With shaking fingers Elena pulled out a box which had the word `personal´ neatly written on it in five languages. It had only been a few days since Tseng had apparently died at the hands of Sephiroth in the Temple of the Ancients. There hadn't been a body when they finally arrived – and of course these bloody Avalanchists couldn't be bothered to more give more than a short account on how he'd handed over the keystone while lying in his own blood – actually a disturbingly large puddle of blood had been the only thing the remaining three Turks had found in the Temple. No trace whatsoever of their boss.

Presently Elena, Reno and Rude were in Tseng's sparsely furnished apartment, sifting through his belongings and packing up. Tseng had never revealed anything about himself other than the obvious. Searching his possessions seemed like an indecent intrusion. Nobody at Shinra knew where exactly he had come from and how he had come to be a Turk. The inconspicuous box in Elena's hands now might just hold the key to his secrets. Reno and Rude each bowed down to look over one of her shoulders. All three of them subconsciously held their breath for a moment. Even though he was gone now his presence was still there, causing their skin to prickle.

"Open it!" Reno whispered hoarsely. Elena's fingers were shaking so badly now that she needed a couple of tries to get the box open. When she did a stack of documents appeared, neatly sorted of course. Everything Tseng did was neat and orderly, or had been. Elena took the uppermost paper and slowly unfolded it. It was in Wutaian, the letters artfully calligraphed on the paper and an official looking seal at the bottom that showed the water dragon, the Wutaian Empire's coat of arms. Her Wutaian wasn't that great, so it took her a while to decipher the document's contents, and even then she wasn't quite sure she'd done it right.

"_Before the glorious god Leviathan and the Empire of Wutai this document certifies that _Ryuji Xian Tseng, age 18,_ and _Hiromi Dai Bao Feng, age 17,_ have been legally married at the Sadang Temple in the community of Zunumaya, province of Jiao-Lan-Te, on Friday 27 April, 473__rd__ year of the reign of the house Kisaragi."_

Reno swallowed hard. "That's not possible." He said in a voice devoid of emotion. "He doesn't wear a ring. He never wore a ring. Do they have wedding rings in Wutai?"

Elena didn't really pay attention to her co-workers at this point, otherwise she could have informed him that wedding rings were indeed a part of Wutaian tradition as much as of any other on the planet, that in the eastern empire the rings were worn on the right hand rather than on the left, and that it was a custom to bury one's own ring with one's spouse as a sign of grief in case one's wife or husband died, widowing the remaining partner. Her mind was racing, the thoughts jumbled up. She reached for the next paper and shakily unfolded it. She read it out half aloud, put it aside and took the next one. So she proceeded until the box was half empty. Apart from the marriage certificate there had been nothing conclusive. A testament bestowing a middle-sized estate in the aforementioned place upon their late commander, graduation certificates from middle and higher school and the Imperial Naval Academy, the awarding of an order for valor, diverse but ultimately meaningless letters, greeting cards, and finally, _finally_, another official document, certifying the death of _Hiromi Dai Tseng_, born to the house of _Bao Feng_. She had barely been twenty-one. Normally this would have sufficed for the three Turks, but curiosity could not be successfully struggled against and the opening of yet the next paper revealed a birth certificate, stating the above named as parents of a boy called _Koji Jian Tseng_, born almost a year after the date on the previous death certificate. Impossible? Obviously. Tseng had been a man of many secrets, but even he couldn't perform miracles. Elena was quite sure concerning that. What she was also very sure about was the fact that he'd hang all three of them up on their toes from the top of a very tall building if he found them sneaking through his stuff. Luckily he didn't know. What Elena, and her colleagues, sorely wanted to know themselves was the background of the mystery they had just unfolded.

"Do you think we can all take a vacation at the same time?" Reno asked no one in particular. It was clear the Turks thought the exact same thing that moment.

"I'm sure Rufus will let us go on grounds of `psychological distress´ or whatever it's called nowadays. And he doesn't need to know what exactly were doing." Elena replied. "So it's pretty much business as usual."

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"No." he said, straightening out the fabric of his sleeves. "I know I owe you all my life several times over and probably that of my firstborn too, but the answer is no."

"You can't do that boss!" Reno cried aggravatedly.

"I can't possibly spare you." Rufus replied with hardly maintained calm.

"Don't you want to know what's behind all this?" The redhead wailed again, shoving Tseng's mysterious documents towards the young president in frustration. "Come on, I know you're dying to uncover this mystery."

"It could be a trace." Rude interjected. Elena followed his lead: "Tseng might even still be alive. After all there was no body. Either which way, this is too cryptic to just let it rest. We ought to have a look at it."

"Besides, the rookies are turning out alright. They'll on their own manage for a little while, yo."

Rufus sighed and resigned to his fate. "You do realize that if he's still alive he will probably break every bone in your bodies and skin you with a rusty pocket knife, and then start to torture you for this intrusion of privacy?"

The Turks nodded. "Alright, then do what you must. Just don't provoke another war with the empire. Behave yourselves."

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Elena shifted uncomfortably in her chair again for what seemed like the hundredth time since they had come in. Alright, so it had been her idea to try the provincial administration of Jiao-Lan-Te first, and initially it wasn't such a bad approach either.

"So where exactly is that so-called friend of yours supposed to reside?" the official seated on the opposite side of the desk asked, feigning boredom and shooting them another look of utter contempt. Foreigners weren't very well received in the empire, especially in the more remote areas like this one. Old Shinra and his war games had destroyed any chance for that in the near future.

"It's in the community of Zunumaya. Somewhere near the Sadang-Temple I presume." Elena answered.

"Zunumaya is very vast. Sadang lies in the south of that. It's Sika territory too." The official explained, maintaining the same bored expression he had taken on within seconds of the Turks entering his office. "Xian Tseng … Bao Feng …," he murmured while skimming through the records again, "Sika names, too."

Elena had a faint feeling that she had better known who or what exactly a Sika was. Be the edge in the officials voice she assumed it to be something threatening and the man seemed only too happy to let them walk directly into trouble. But to hell with that, they were Turks. They could kick anybody's rear side if they wanted.

"Well, here's the last known address to that name. Good day." The official snarled, shoving a paper at them and turning to his other work again.

"I have suspicion this guy wouldn't call an ambulance if one of us collapsed in this insane heat!" Reno exclaimed once they were out of the stuffy office building and out in the merciless sun again. "So what do we do now?"

"We take the train from here to Zunumaya and have a look at this address." Elena said, waving the note in one hand.

"Alrighty," Reno mumbled doubtfully, "Let's just hope nobody's set on lynching us. And what does `Sika´ mean anyway?"

Rude pushed his shades up his nose again and followed Elena, shrugging his shoulders.

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"So what do we do now?" Reno whined, throwing up his arms in exasperation and looking down the dirt road to both directions. They were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Elena struggled severely with the large map Rude was patiently holding up for her. "Next time we do as _I_ say and simply _ask_!" she grumbled while trying to discern a route that would lead them to Tseng's last known address in Wutai. The trouble was that they had no idea where to go next. It wasn't as if this was a town or village with houses neatly lined along the streets. There was no clear system of address here. The last house was ten miles away and they weren't even sure what street they were on right now. Maybe it didn't even have any name or number. Elena huffed and rubbed her tired eyes, determined to focus, before dealing with the map again.

"That way." She simply stated, fully aware that her hand was pointing straight ahead … into the hills of southern Zunumaya. There wasn't even a path leading that way.

"Umm, Laney are ya …"

"Yes, Reno, I am sure. Come on." She replied and mounted her Chocobo again. No motorized vehicle could be gotten in this remote area. It had been difficult enough to obtain their current means of transportation. The people here were less than cooperative towards foreigners, thanks to Shinra senior.

"If not we'll be camping out in the open. Again." Reno muttered.

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They reached the estate in the late afternoon. The house was very pretty with a neat garden and sufficiently large for the average southern Wutaian family of about seven people.

"Umm, well … you knock."

"What? You knock!"

"I can't. You knock."

"Me? Never! You knock!"

Rude sighed exasperatedly at his co-worker's stubborn bickering and let his large hand beat down determinedly on the massive wooden door. At first, nothing happened.

"Maybe nobody's home. We should g-"

"Stay." Rude simply said and held Reno by the collar as the redhead made to sneak off. Just a split second later the door creaked open, revealing a young woman of such exceeding beauty that Elena had to elbow both her colleagues in the ribs to stop them from ogling.

"Yes?" the young woman asked in flawless, yet strongly accented Common; her confusion of having three foreigners appear at her doorstep apparent.

"Excuse me, ma'am, we are looking for someone who lived here. A Mister Xian Tseng." Elena said. The woman furrowed her brows in deep thought before hesitantly replying. "Tseng? No, the Tsengs never lived here. As far as I know the last members of that family were dispersed all over the eastern provinces during the war," at this her voice gained an unreadable edge, "They, the Tsengs I mean, had a son – he died almost ten years ago in the war, the daughters married and moved away. I'm pretty positive you won't find any Tsengs here in this area." With that she attempted to close the door again, but was distracted by the wailing of a small child somewhere in the depths of the house.

"Ma'am," Elena began to interject.

"Sorry, I can't help you. Now if you'll excuse me?" the woman cut her off clippedly and turned to close the door again. It slammed into the Turks' stunned faces before they could react further.

"She's lying." Rude stated matter-of-factly after a few seconds.

"Right through her very perfect pearly teeth." Reno agreed. "It's getting late; let's find a place to camp."

With her now once again content baby on her arm she entered a dim room and gracefully knelt down besides a makeshift sickbed. Balancing the child she pulled back the covers and inspected her patient's wound, frowning gravely.

"They were here, Ryu." She said softly, gently brushing away a stray strand of hair from the man's face. The baby blubbered happily as it tried to catch one of the man's fingers with its chubby little hand. The woman set her child down on the man's lap and helped him into an upright sitting position. He flinched slightly at the sharp tugging pain his wound caused him in the process, but braved a weak smile at both woman and infant. She sighed and let her head drop on the edge of his cot. "No matter which way we turn, there always is a wall or a pool of sharks." She murmured gloomily. Securing the baby with one hand he cupped her cheek with the other, tenderly lifting up her chin so she would look at him. "Dai-chan … have I thanked you already?" he rasped.

"Every day since you woke up. Completely unnecessarily so."

"You truly are the best of wives – and I am the worst of husbands." He breathed.

"Nonsense. The only thing I can accuse you of is tricking your way out of having to change little Kyo's nappies here by almost being sliced in half. I swear the next time I'll make you do it and if you're holding your head under your arm." She stated with dry irony, playfully poking the baby's chubby side, causing their infant son to erupt in joyous giggles. For a tender moment they simply sat, regarding and interacting with their baby.

"Did you hear what I said earlier?" she asked. He inhaled deeply, then winced at the pain when it made his wound stretch uncomfortably. "Yes. The Turks were here. That means they suspect something."

"So?"

"I won't leave you again." He stated firmly. She nodded automatically, knowing his words to be a wish rather than a promise.

Meanwhile little Kyo's bottom lip had begun to quiver suspiciously. "Oh dear." His mother remarked as she quickly snatched the baby to her again, not wanting its crying to wake up the other children. "Hungry, aren't you, my precious little darling?" she cooed as she nursed the child.

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_Alright, there it is. Started out as a mere drabble it is now up to YOU solely whether this story will live and grow, or perish right here and now. YOUR responses will determine, whether I write on, how, when, for how long, possibly even influence the storyline. At this point, nothing is fixed. Communicate with me, leave me reviews, messages, feedback, advice, questions, anything at all - it will be appreciated. Thank you!_


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